Manufacturing Strategy and Performance of the New Venture Firm

This research addresses new venture firm performance as a function of consistency between manufacturing and business unit strategy. The empirical study involved 217 new venture firms in the communications and computer equipment manufacturing industries. The results of the study indicate that successful firms exhibit a “consistency” between manufacturing and price-driven business unit strategy. This same consistency was not observed between manufacturing and quality-driven business unit strategy. The research suggests that successful new venture managers are able to correctly relate key manufacturing decisions to business unit strategy. Interestingly, the results of this study tend to indicate that both successful and unsuccessful firms have essentially the same perception of the industry. However, unsuccessful firms lack the ability to match key manufacturing decisions and business unit strategy.